Broken Isn't a State of Being, It's a Way of Life
by xooxu
Summary: It really wasn't just for a thrill, but it wasn't out of some twisted sense of duty either. -AU-ish, OOC and masochistic!Kirk, assertive!Pike, and McCoy get's thrown in the mix, too.-
1. The Regen Coffee is Okay

Title: Broken Isn't a State of Being, It's a Way of Life

Summary: It really wasn't just for a thrill, but it wasn't out of some twisted sense of duty either.

Warnings: AU-ish, OOC and masochistic!Kirk, assertive!Pike, and McCoy get's thrown in the mix, too.

Chapter 1: The Regen Coffee is Okay If You Don't Mind the Taste of Bitter Water

Chapter Warnings: Indifference and the brief mentioning of gore. Two non-character deaths. Maybe two f-bombs.

* * *

The hallway is narrow and crowded. This base is designed to hold fifty men comfortably. Instead, it holds somewhere close to a hundred and twenty. The last time James counted, it was one hundred twenty-four, but that's probably decreased since last night.

It's who-fucking-cares in the morning, and James's sipping the coffee the regen offered him. It's low-quality and tastes very little like coffee, but it's got caffeine, and James can take small pleasure in the burn of his tongue, so it works out okay.

His rifle is strapped to his back and his back-up canon is holstered to his hip. The heavy duty black fabric of his uniform is stained and grimy, but maintenance had more important machines that needed their services than the washers, so James lives with a stain or two.

It's not his turn for gunner duty, but he's still heading for the small one person ladder that leads to the observation room. Anyone who bothers to look his way can figure that out, and no one bothers to stop him. Even if James is supposed to be taking his eight hour sleep break, even if he hasn't slept in twenty-two hours, even if he only got three hours of sleep the last time he actually lied down, even if everyone knew that, no one yelled at him go back to bed. They knew he only ever went up to the tower when he needed to go up to the tower.

The hatch is broken and doesn't open automatically anymore, but James is used to pulling it open by hand now. It's not easy, because he's got to hold on to the ladder yet somehow get the eighty pounds of force holding the door closed to give in and let him on his way, but it only takes up fifteen seconds of his time. Another fifty feet up, and James is climbing into the small observation deck.

He hits the alarm before continuing to the sixth gunner hold. One of the holds is leaking smoke, and another is missing half of the door. The third guard is screaming from the floor, staring at where his leg used to be, his hold wide open and bloody. A few meds would be up in about a minute to carry him away and suture the stub, then send him on the next transport of the planet. He'd get a great new mechanical leg that worked roughly nine times better than his own natural one (depending on the model), and James was betting he'd see the soldier again in less than two weeks.

The gunner hold is working perfectly, so James makes a mental note to thank Scotty. The seat pulls up on command, and James drops the gun and cannon against the wall before climbing into the gunner. The door whooshes closed as James straps himself in. The seat slides noisily back while slowly turning itself over, end over end, until James is upside down, held securely to the chair by the harnesses. The mechanism groans as it maneuvers the seat the last ten feet down into the protected gunner. It's small glass dome made of a shielded plexi glass designed to crack but never shatter. About four feet out in front of the glass is the gun, a cheap old model that still used projectiles to get the disintegrators to the target. It's small, and made to not obstruct the view of the gunman.

James takes the handles and swivels three-sixty, double checking Scotty's handy-work. It move with a eighth-second delay, but even Scotty is limited by the technology he's got.

James figures there are nine. That's if they're average. Four if they're good, eleven or twelve if they're some of the hired farmers and traders they seem to be sending the base's way more and more.

Three of the five usual attack spots are occupied. Twelve, James decided. If they were any good, they wouldn't have picked the most obvious spots. Even if they were the most convenient.

The gun barely leaves a mark as three of the targets are disintegrated. James knows that if he were closer, there would be a soft crackling sound as the molecular bonds broke at the macro level, but from the distance of well over two hundred yards, the only sign that James had hit them was the tell-tale cloud of dust. Part of a branch is also taken out, and the rest of it breaks off. The sound of the limb crashing through hundred-foot-tall forest is deafening in the silence of the gunner.

It takes a hundred and twenty-six minutes for James to kill the twelve snipers, and another forty for him to decide that there wasn't a thirteenth. By the time he's removing the straps, the two working gunner holds are filled and the meds are already done cleaning up the previous three.

It's been twenty-five hours, and there is no more caffeine in his system, and James hadn't felt an adrenaline rush from a gunner-sniper fight in months.

Len had a bed to himself for the next five hours. That would be long enough.

* * *

A/N: My very first AU! … Well, maybe? I can't remember, now. But at the least, it's my first AU for Star Trek. This isn't _really_ an AU, because they aren't the same characters. There is a James T. Kirk that exists in another universe that went through everything that happened in the movie. Just like there's a James T. Kirk who's father didn't die and there's a James T. Kirk who has a Spock with a goatee. But it is an alternate universe, so it's still and AU. It's still the technically the same date and everything, but the dating system is different in this universe.

So, Jim goes by James in this universe. There are also lots of other little changes that will be revealed as the story goes on. Bones is also Len or Leonard, too.

Spock doesn't appear! The Spock in this universe will probably never meet our James. But the rest of the cast is there at some point or another. Even some of Pike's cast is thrown in for good measure.


	2. Its a Good Thing the Number of Poor Kids

Title: Broken Isn't a State of Being, It's a Way of Life

Summary: It really wasn't just for a thrill, but it wasn't out of some twisted sense of duty either.

Chapter 2: It's a Good Thing the Number of Poor Kids with Nowhere Else to Go Isn't Getting Any Lower

Chapter Warnings: Um, cursing? I think that's about it.

**

* * *

**

"_We're talking about it,"_ Len is saying over the link, but James is busy cleaning up the mess from yesterday.

The snipers blew off one whole gunner, and severely damaged a second. James was working on getting the empty hole prepared for the attachment of a new system. To do this, he's outside, hanging from a harness attached to the exterior of the tower. It's rigged up in several places so he can maneuver around by clipping himself on to a different pulley.

"We are. But not right now," James says back into the link.

The tinny sound of Leonard's sigh is played back through the ear piece in James's helmet. _"Fine. Just promise me you're done after this." _

"I have to fill in for Malleric." James clips the saw back to his harness and gives the barely attached frame a good tug. It comes lose of the melted nuts and falls down into the canopy below. Eventually, some of the natives will come and take it from the ground below the base, probably for the metal, maybe to sell to someone else.

"_And why can't Malleric do armory duty himself?"_ Len bites.

"He's dead." James feels for his pliers as he looks at the salvageable track system. "He died first in yesterday's sniper fire."

James can hear some far away yelling through the link. Len put down the head piece to curse loudly. _"Fuck, James,"_ Len says, putting the mic back in place._ "You could have died. Or even ended up like Ramero with a new metal leg." _

"… Yeah," James says absent-mindedly.

Part of the left-side track system hangs off of the wall by a few wires and a screw that manages to hold on. However, the track itself is relatively unharmed. If James can manage to rewire it back to the remote panel that controls this part of the track, then he wouldn't have to lug a new one back out here in a few days when they got the new system.

"_Yeah? That's all you're going to say? _Yeah_? And now you're hangin' out there by a goddamn rope! It would only take one sniper and you'd be in pieces! Pieces that, despite what you may believe, I _can't_ put back together!" _

"They wouldn't come back so soon, Len."

"_How the _fuck_ would you know that! You said it yourself that they're getting desperate!" _

"Even if they're desperate, they aren't dumbasses. They know we'll have our best on the gunners."

There is the soft static of silence for a long and full minute. James can hear Len clacking with the padd work for the new gunner, before he starts again. _"I sometimes just wish you didn't absorb every word Pike spits out at you." _

James finishes with the panel and the wiring to the track. "We're going to nee a new alloy siding, but the track up to G-six hyphen seven-eight-eight-oh point four is fine on the left side. The right one is demolished from B-one oh." He start on removing the warped alloy siding, removing the screws that had remained in place. "Some AA siding model five-zero-six point three-six. We're gonna need at least three of those."

"_Yeah. Yeah, okay. That the last of the order?" _

"Yeah. I've got to finish taking off the track on the right side, and I've got to get the rest of the siding and insulation out. I'll be done in forty minutes."

"_When does the armory shift start?" _

"At fourteen-hundred."

"_You'll have twenty minutes. Go eat a pack or something. Maybe regen an apple. No coffee." _

James stops unscrewing and tries to look at earpiece, instead focusing at the dense forest surrounding him. "No coffee?" he pleads.

"_No coffee." _ Leonard's voice is firm and uncompromising, and James knows that, even though there is no way the med could, Len would somehow find out if James put some caffeine into his system. _"I've got to get back to the bay for my shift. We're still going to talk about it." _

James sighs, resuming his drilling. "Yes, Len. But not now."

The silence of the broken link is startling. The thick static had become his background music. Now, the silence of the trees is the only sound he can hear past his drill.

- . - . -

The armory is full of rifles, cannons, grenades, projectiles, and Private Chekov when James gets there fifty-six minutes later.

"Hey, Kirk," Chekov greets him with a heavy Terran accent. It's rare to see anyone from Earth this far out. He was a large man in his late teens, maybe nineteen. He's of direct Russian dissent, and shows it in his square features, dark grey eyes, and light brown hair. His stories of the Expanse are written on his face in the long burn scar covering his right temple and brow. His right eye is artificial, but his family had paid extra to match his natural eye color, and James could only tell because of the soft glint that would catch deep in the pupil.

"Hey," James greets back. "I heard Pavel's old enough to join the grey coats, now."

Chekov beams proudly at the mention of his younger brother. "Turned ten last month. Mom doesn't want to let him go though. I say that even if he doesn't end up in the Expanse, he should still go through the course."

"Good plan. He'll get five years of free schooling. He'd have to do a year, but that's part of the education, right?"

"Yeah. I mean, he'll probably get picked up by a recruiter anyway. You should see his scores."

"I have," James laughs. He and Chekov weren't close, at least not on a first name basis, but Chekov loved his little brother, and liked to show off anything about him the private heard in letters from home.

"Oh, yeah. … He's brilliant," Chekov sighs. "And only ten. I bet it won't even take him five years to make it to Private. He'll be ordering my ass around before I know it."

James smiles, but Chekov doesn't see it. He's staring at the wall with a distance that tells James that he's seeing his brother's face. So James looks at the numbers on the pad for his shift. Chekov had managed to scan more than a third into the system in the four hours he was there.

"How old are you, Kirk?" Chekov asks. When James glances up from the pad momentarily, Chekov's still staring at the wall.

"Fifteen."

"Fifteen?" The startled edge to his voice makes James look up again. There's a startled edge in his expression to match. "Thought you got here two years ago?"

"I graduated in four."

Chekov is quiet for a moment, and then laughs a little with a nervousness, "Who the hell'dya piss off to get the fuckin' Oтвращение system as your first assignment?"

"I asked for it," James says, looking back down through the numbers of each type of gun. He was surprised to see the addition of a new type of beam gun, a phaser, on the list. The technology wasn't new, but the IC usually spent the money on larger systems or battle fronts against the Orions.

"What?"

"I was following Pike. We work great together. They wanted to put me with this guy I'd had as an instructor, but I would have shot him by the end of the first month, he was such an ass."

"So you come out the fucking edges of the universe just because you have some issues with the guy you're working with?"

"I'm going to start on the two four hundred rifles. Do you want to keep on the Selli grenades?" James looks up from the pad to Chekov's incredulous stare.

- . - . -

"No, no, no, no, no! You can't keep him!" Len is yelling at Major Uhura. "He's been up for twenty hours already!"

"We are down five men and Jim is the only other person on the whole base who can reliably translate Trellis. We only need him for four hours."

"And in five hours, his next shift starts! He's going to bed now!"

Uhura stops walking and turns to face Leonard, whose momentum nearly collides with her halted frame. She pulls off her head piece and glares daggers into him. Her short, choppy hair falls in her eyes now that the head piece isn't holding it back, but it does nothing to lessen her stare, so she does nothing to fix it. She's several inches shorter than Len, but the med still backs up slightly. "_Doctor Mc_Coy. You might be Kirk's physician, but I am his, _and your_, superior. And right now I say his services are needed."

James hears a tell-tale crackle in the static his earpiece, and he turns back to his console to chase it. He had a one-on-one with Scotty about how to effectively chase subspace chatter through the Trellian blocks. He'd like to say he's pretty good at it now, but he's not sure.

"If he's falling asleep, his services aren't going to be very productive, _needed or not_. _You _do whatever it is you need done! You're better at it than anyone here!"

"I have my own duties to attend to, McCoy."

"Then pull someone else whose shift it actually is to take care of those!"

The static falls away some and the crackle becomes louder and drawn out. That's a good sign.

"McCoy, if you do not leave my presence within the next twenty seconds, I _will_ pull a slip. You would be serving an order quicker than you could fix a paper-cut. Kirk will be staying. I already have clearance from Pike." Uhura put the head piece back on and turns on her heels and continues walking.

The crackle is morphed into a garbled and faint voice.

"Pike? Pike can transport himself into Cолнце IV for all I care! James is overworked and in the past sixty-eight hours, he's slept for only seven. He's not getting only an hour of sleep for another twenty-some hours of work tomorrow, too!"

"This conversation is _over_, McCoy. Leave or be escorted out, I could not care less."

"I'll be fine, Len. Just go," James says without looking up from the screen. Codes and by-passes are flashing in front of his eyes, almost faster than he can keep up with. They morph the sound transmitted to his earpiece into something closer to Trellis. "You need sleep, too, anyway."

Leonard is silent, but James is very aware that he is still there. He doesn't move for another thirty-three seconds, before grunting and leaving with one last, muttered, "Stupid kids that don't care for themselves and …" before his complaints are out of earshot. His ungraceful footsteps, however, linger for several more seconds.

The codes become more and more complex and less and less Russian oriented as the voice became clearer. Two minutes later, and Kirk was translating haphazardly into a Russian short hand that he would have to double check with the recording before submitting. Someone else, probably Uhura, would triple check before expanding to full Russian Standard.

**

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**

A/N: Introductory chapter for a lot of characters. Scotty and Sulu make it in the next chapter, and then we've got the bridge crew accounted for. Minus Spock, but like I said in the last chapter, broken!James and broken!Spock never meet. I will be getting to why that is eventually.

The Chekov that James knows isn't Pavel Chekov from the original or movie. This is his older brother, who is currently nameless to me. If Pavel really has an older brother, I've got no idea who he is. So right now he's an OC, but not a big one. Just had to get Pavel in there some how.

Len is just a doctor on the base, not a CMO. There is a head doctor, but even he's got little authority, so Leonard can't really tell anyone what to do.

Uhura is a Major because she's totally got an air of authority. I can make the captain a lowly private, but not Ms. Uhura.

I'm totally bullshitting every term or weapon in there. None of these (minus the phaser) are found in TOS or in the movie, and I did mean for that to happen. Their technology is supposed to be crap because they're out on the edges, where they don't have the budget to be cutting edge. Sorry if my lack of knowledgeable terms offends anyone.


End file.
